Britain and the Alliance

• Main Author: Carver, Michael
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University PressOxford 1992
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198222927.003.0012; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52230407/isbn-9780198222927-book-part-12.pdf

Abstract Britain’s contribution to the North Atlantic Alliance has always been a key one, and never more so than in bringing it into existence. To Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary when negotiations with the Soviet Union over the future of Germany broke down in December 1947, goes the credit for taking the initiative in forming an association of the democratic countries of Western Europe with the US A and, possibly, the Dominions of the British Commonwealth. He saw some such association as essential in order to instil confidence into the countries of Western Europe that they could stand up to Communist pressure, whether direct from the Soviet Union or indirect from Communist parties within their own countries, backed by the former. The European Recovery Plan, initiated in June 1947 by the US Secretary of State, General George Marshall, had provided an economic pillar to support that confidence, following President Truman’s declaration on 12 March pledging US support for ‘free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressuresd’. Bevin’s notification to Marshall that Britain could no longer afford to carry the burden of military and financial support to Greece and Turkey had triggered this off and was perhaps a deliberate move by Bevin to draw the Cnited States back into involvement in European affairs.